Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)
The Business Productivity Online Suite is a set of Microsoft applications including Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications which are offered as a hosted solution.
These hosted services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. When your company subscribes to one or more of the services, it connects to the rich interactivity of on-premises client and server applications with the flexibility and scalability of Web-based services.
Because the solution is hosted, it reduces your company’s need to maintain IT services on site. Many organisations today are moving to this "software-as-a-service" (SaaS) model, because it decreases the costs involved in managing hardware and software.
Benefits include:
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Accesses to the latest business productivity capabilities
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Ease of Use
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Privacy & Rapid Disaster Recovery
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Greater Flexibility
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Improved Agility
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Enterprise-class Security & Reliability
Features of the Business Productivity Online Suite
E-mail and calendar functions — Hosted Microsoft Exchange delivers e-mail services including spam filtering, anti-virus protection, and synchronization of mobile devices. Through Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, you can use the advanced e-mail, calendar, contact, and task management features of Exchange Online. Office Outlook Web Access enables users to access their e-mail messages from almost any browser — whether the user is in the office or on the road.
Document collaboration and workspaces — SharePoint Online allows you to share and work together on documents, maintain version control for shared documents, create intranet sites to manage projects and project workflows, post calendar information, and set up wikis and blogs.
Web conferencing — Office Live Meeting allows you to hold online meetings with colleagues, customers, and partners in real time. Office Live Meeting participants can convene online to share documents, ask questions, work on a virtual "whiteboard," and talk to each other during the meeting.
Microsoft Online Services Administration Center — The Administration Center gives you an online management portal to manage your services and users. From the Administration Center, service administrators can import multiple user accounts, use e-mail migration tools, create distribution lists, create SharePoint site collections, and submit service requests to Microsoft Online Services Technical Support.
Microsoft Online Services Sign In application — The Sign In application is a tool that automatically sets up services and allows users to access all of their services with no need to sign in each time they use them. The Sign In application is available from both the Administration Center and My Company Portal.
